Unresolved issues

This key only allows one image to be linked, which may not be sufficient for all use cases. Furthermore, it has been pointed out that image tags are highly subjective, as well as susceptible to spam and/or edit wars, and therefore perhaps might not be well suited for OSM. Alternative approaches have been suggested to avoid these issues while still fulfilling the same needs as the image tag, but none has been widely accepted so far.

Other considerations are related to choosing an image to be linked:

Images stored on well-known platforms (e.g. Wikimedia Commons, Flickr) offer the benefit of machine-readable licenses – without this feature, only PD images could legally embedded into maps and applications. However, it is unclear whether this should be a requirement.

Images under a free license may be preferable over less generously licensed images. Again, there is not yet a consensus whether to make this a requirement.